Small Prayer In The Green Gold Wood Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

(to my mother, Mary Adalyn Young-Douglas who was also a poet)

for those who have stolen the gold dusting on my small half wing uprising despite of storms for Christ whom I adore
surely you know you should have known

there was more gold where that came from replenishing
and what good did it ever do you
to take the shine off anything disparaging

you devious apple pilfering polishers movers up the rungs
of a not so divine ladder of ascent
shoo flies shoo from off the jams my mother made

and gave to me all damson in a universe
of summer sighs what makes you think
I should report to you

you are not my officers
and I never learned the drill
and sang where I could under the cumulus clouds

and dyed to match
rose tinted chartreuse and azure true
as in antique postcards I sent to you, my mother

knowing you were very far
from as you said, "the land of births and christenings."
painting the nimbus round the saints

in your own radiance and beyond all blame
embedded in starlight and in your finest pearls
while they asked me underneath in the world

if I knew how to file or was that too hard for me: .
in several languages I said
knowing the alphabets were on my side

because I never used them
to self aggrandize to dole out wrong for wrong

o give me back the other half of the wing
you hired mourners at the funerals

Christ will mend it still

even if I will only fly to the smallest twig
in the green gold wood.
where the sparrows sang of Him, continually.

she said, as they always would.

mary angela douglas 12 june 2020